Arkansas Workers See Weekly Wages Stall In Late 2017

March 12, 2018CrainMedia

Arkansas employers continued to add jobs through the third quarter of 2017, but wage growth hit a wall as average weekly pay was down 0.6% from the previous year, according to the U.S. county workforce data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

For September 2016 to September 2017, average wages of $788 per week in Arkansas fell 0.6% year-over-year. Nationwide, the U.S. average weekly wage also decreased by 0.6%, falling to $1,021 in the third quarter of 2017. This is the third decline since first quarter 2016, and one of only nine declines in the history of the BLS series that dates to 1978.

Overall, weekly wages for Arkansas’ 1.21 million workers fell nearly 23% behind the same take home pay of the other 143 million U.S. workers, ranking the Natural State 49th out of the 50 states. Mississippi workers, ranked last among the 50 states and the District of Columbia, had average wages of only $729 per week. MORE